


touch

by ataxophilia



Category: Pushing Daisies
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Canonical Character Death, F/M, as in chuck still died ned still brought her back look where we are now, every fandom needs a pacific rim au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 12:52:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1348138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ataxophilia/pseuds/ataxophilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The drift, as it turns out, is useful to once-dead girls and their reawakeners in more ways than just piloting jaegers, and so now, in the few moments they have to themselves before they’re deposited out at sea to fight, Chuck and Ned begin an intricate process of chasing precisely the right RABITs for precisely the right amount of time to be able to feel, for a brief snatch of time, their hands clasped tightly together, fingers entwined, Ned’s thumb stroking reassuringly over Chuck’s skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	touch

**Author's Note:**

> Pacific Rim AUs are indeed my pet obsession, so once I discovered Pushing Daisies, this just had to be written. 
> 
> Unbeta'd, all errors are mine.

At this very moment, Ned, one half of the pilot team of mark IV jaeger Pushing Daisies, is watching his childhood sweetheart Chuck Charles, the other half of the Pushing Daises team, get strapped into the various scientific contraptions required to connect the two of them to each other and to Pushing Daisies. Once their head technician (one Olive Snook, academy friend of Ned, who gave up on dreams of piloting after a practice drop that went worse than expected and resulted in an unfortunate death, only to find her true calling in designing and maintaining new jaeger technologies) declares them both ready, technologically, at least, to fight off the kaiju fast approaching the coast, Ned says, “Hi,” with a fond-bordering-on-sappy smile that Chuck can barely see through his helmet.

"Hey." Chuck smiles equally fondly and unashamedly sappily back. "You okay?"

Before Ned can answer Chuck’s question, their conversation is interrupted by LOCCENT controller Emerson Cod, a man who thrives on sarcasm, the money the program gets from millionaires who don’t want their homes destroyed by kaiju attacks, and the knowledge that good yarn did not, unlike most other resources, become almost impossible to get hold of without a lot of money and a lot of contacts after the kaiju war began in earnest. “Hold the pillow talk until we get back, lovebirds. It’s time to get your asses in the drift so you can get that giant metal robot ass you share out into the ocean.”

Ned and Chuck, as per usual, ignore him. ”I’m good,” Ned says in reply to Chuck’s question. Emerson Cod rolls his eyes and groans into the microphone. Ned continues as though he’d never made a sound. “Well. As good as I can be, considering that we are about to engage in a glorified fist-fight with a sea monster. So.” He pauses to smile again, a little weaker than before. “Good.”

Chuck’s smile only grows warmer. “We’ve always made it back so far, haven’t we?” She reaches out to press the tips of her metal-encased fingers against the tips of Ned’s also metal-encased fingers, and adds, “I’ll be holding your hand the whole way through.”

That gets a proper smile out of Ned. Both pilots straighten up and turn to face front, and, at Ned’s nod, they both announce, “Pushing Daisies, ready for the drop.”

"Finally," Emerson Cod grouses, and proceeds to file the correct commands in the correct order to get Ned and Chuck drifting and Pushing Daisies out into the water. As he enters the final command in the sequence he mutters, as he always does, "Pushing Daisies. Who’s dumb idea of a name was that?"

The idea was Chuck’s, and to those in the know, a select group which includes Ned, Chuck and Emerson, and no one else, it is not a dumb name at all, any more that Chuck’s reassuring statement regarding hand-holding was a casual one. The facts, as they stand, are these:

When Ned was a young boy, he discovered that he had a remarkable gift: were he to touch a dead body, it would come back to life. The discovery of this skill followed the death of Ned’s beloved dog, Digby, who Ned brought back by gently shaking his shoulder in an unnaturally successful attempt to rouse him. Ned’s first demonstration of the three conditions of using the power came less than an hour later, when Ned’s beloved mother died suddenly and unexpectedly. Upon Ned’s touch she re-awakened - sixty seconds later, next door neighbour Charles Charles, father of the aforementioned Chuck Charles, also died of mysterious, inexplicable causes. But that was not to be the end of young Ned’s discoveries that day, for six hours later, after tucking Ned into bed, Ned’s mother leant down for a goodnight kiss, and promptly died for the second time that day.

Thus were the rules of Ned’s power established: first touch, life; second touch, death, this time for good; and should the previously deceased person remain alive-again for more than a minute, another life is taken in return.

Of course, these rules were not immediately obvious to young Ned. It took many weeks of experimenting and deducing during long, lonely nights at the boy’s school his father abandoned him at to work them out for certain and, after a series of mistakes and mishaps, promise himself that he would not use his power intentionally again. A promise which he kept faithfully, with a few accidental slip-ups through the years, until, while training to become a jaeger pilot, he heard the news of a kaiju attack on the city he grew up in, and the death of, among a few dozen other casualties, a young woman named Charlotte Charles.

Ned was aware that his power would give him the chance to say a proper goodbye to girl whose father he had inadvertently murdered and who, while the two children had been at their respective parents’ funerals, had given him his first kiss. He enlisted the help of then-aspiring LOCCENT controller Emerson Cod, who had discovered Ned’s power and backstory when he caught Ned tripping into the corpse of a recently deceased Kaiju (the incident remains, to this day, the most traumatising moment of Emerson’s life) and promptly re-deading it with another touch, and the two of them set off for the funeral home that Chuck Charles’ body was being kept in.

After a reminder of the more-than-one-minute aspect of his power, Emerson left Ned alone with the body of the dead girl he used to love. It would, Ned knew, be hard to re-kill Charlotte Charles - and yet, despite knowing that, he was still unprepared when the sixty seconds he had became five seconds, and so, instead of kissing Chuck back to being dead, he offered her a chance at a second life. A second chance which Chuck Charles readily accepted, much to the misfortune of the funeral home owner, who, like Chuck’s father, died of mysterious, inexplicable causes that very second.

Emerson Cod was, predictably, unhappy with this turn of events, but he agreed to help smuggle once-dead Chuck Charles back to the jaeger academy and sign her into the system under the false name of Kitty Pymms. Kitty Pymms excelled at all her classes and, despite her inability to touch him, showed clear compatibility with Ned during their sparring sessions together (in which she remained almost fully covered at all times, thanks to an extensive collection of long sleeved polo neck shirts, leggings, and supple leather gloves) - enough so that, upon graduation, the two of them were assigned to a shiny new mark IV jaeger that Chuck christened Pushing Daisies as a cheery, cheeky homage to her literal second life.

The drift, as it turns out, is useful to once-dead girls and their reawakeners in more ways than just piloting jaegers, and so now, in the few moments they have to themselves before they’re deposited out at sea to fight, Chuck and Ned begin an intricate process of chasing precisely the right RABITs for precisely the right amount of time to be able to feel, for a brief snatch of time, their hands clasped tightly together, fingers entwined, Ned’s thumb stroking reassuringly over Chuck’s skin. Unable to touch in reality, the two of them treasure these stolen moments in the drift, when Chuck can squeeze Ned’s hand and flash him a smile, and Ned can brush his fingers along Chuck’s jawline and around to the back of her neck, and Chuck can push up onto her tiptoes as Ned leans down, and meet him the middle for a soft, sweet kiss, much like the one they shared in the cemetery all those years ago.

"Hi," Ned repeats against Chuck’s lips, face split into a grin that Chuck rarely sees outside the drift. Though she is aware of the dangers in lingering too long in the drift, these moments, with Ned’s fingers on her skin and Ned’s smile on her own, are ones Chuck considers precious. 

It took many months of risky practicing and a few almost aborted drops to find the balance between chasing the RABITs they need and maintaining a steady drift. Emerson caught on to their attempts within the first dozen, reamed them both out soundly, and then said, with a resigned shake of his head, “It ain’t like either of you fools are gonna listen to a word I just said, is it?”

Ned and Chuck took that as permission to continue and, fourteen tries later, a delighted Chuck wrapped her arms around an equally delighted Ned’s waist and pulled him into a tight hug, before leaning up and kissing his cheek. “We did it,” she had said, laughter ringing through her voice, and Ned had laughed back.

From that moment on, the drift became their sole chance to exchange touches unhindered by the need to have something between their skin. As always, Ned spends as much of the time they have with one hand holding tightly to Chuck’s and the other running over as much of her skin as he can; cheeks, jaw, neck, arms, the delicate inside of her wrist. As always, Chuck returns the gesture with a breathtaking smile that Ned cannot resist kissing away.

Despite his disapproval of Chuck’s alive-and-breathing status, Emerson Cod finds it impossible to deny them this moment, and therefore waits for as long as he possibly can before informing them they have, “Thirty seconds, Daisies.”

Chuck’s grip tightens on Ned’s hand, and he presses another gentle kiss to her lips before pulling back. “Next time,” he promises, as he always does, tracing his fingers back across Chuck’s cheek.

"Next time," Chuck agrees, soft and sad, and they disentangle themselves from each other to brace for the impact of landing and the fight that’ll follow.


End file.
